Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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SUNDANCE ’11 WINNERS ANNOUNCED: “LIKE CRAZY” & “HOW TO DIE IN OREGON” TOP LIST
The Sundance Film Festival announced its jury prize winners this evening with Drake Doremus‘ examination of a long-distance relationship, Like Crazy, taking home the Grand Jury Prize. The film’s lead actress, Felicity Jones, also won a Special Jury acting prize. Other top winners include Peter D. Richardson‘s documentary, How to Die in Oregon for Grand Jury doc prize; Circumstance won the dramatic Audience Award while Buck won the audience award for documentary. Sean Durkin won the narrative best directing prize for Martha Marcy May Marlene and best doc directing went to Jon Foy for Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the […]
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THE ENVIRONMENT, THE WHITE HOUSE, GENOCIDE: THREE SUNDANCE DOCS
Remember the Earth Liberation Front? In the 1990s a collection of separate anonymous cells without any central leadership that carried out acts of sabotage and arson — burning lumber companies, torching a parking lot of SUVs, destroying a research laboratory. The clandestine group’s goal was to halt the destruction of our environment. If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front gives us the larger context of the environmental movement and the more radical Earth Liberation Front, and then focuses on one cell in Oregon and on the activist Daniel McGowan. It is an intriguing and important film […]
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VISITING “PANDEMIC” MISSION CONTROL WITH LANCE WEILER
I stopped by Sundance’s New Frontiers building yesterday and visited Pandemic 1.0 with its creator, Lance Weiler. Here’s a short, casual Flip video with Weiler showing me the two rooms of the installation. For more info on this piece, read Weiler’s column in this issue of Filmmaker. And here’s Jamie Stuart’s piece on Weiler shot this week in Park City at our Main Street lounge.
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“MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE” ACTORS ELIZABETH OLSEN AND JOHN HAWKES
With two movies — Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, which sold to Fox Searchlight; and the one-shot horror picture Silent House — Elizabeth Olsen was one of Sundance 2011’s breakout stars. And while at the festival, Durkin’s fellow lead John Hawkes was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in last year’s festival Grand Jury Prize-winner Winter’s Bone. Here, from Jamie Stuart, are both actors discussing their roles as, respectively, cult follower and cult leader in Martha Marcy May Marlene. Look for Durkin to appear in our mammoth wrap-up video next week.
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SUNDANCE VOLUNTEER CHRISTINE IOANNIDES
Here’s the last of our profiles of volunteers at the Sundance Film Festival. Today, Utah local Christine Ioannides. Visit this spot next week for an interview between Robert Redford and Kenneth Cole discussing the relationship between volunteerism and film festivals.
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PARK CITY CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK #3: GEMS FROM THE OTHER FESTIVAL
While introducing a screening one afternoon this week in the Treasure Mountain Inn’s cramped banquet hall that the Slamdance Film Festival converts into its main cinema every year, Slamdance Co-Founder and expert hat-wearer Dan Mirvish remarked with a bit of awe that this was the 17th annual event, meaning that Slamdance, once referred to pejoratively as Sundance’s “parasite” by Robert Redford, had now been around for over half Sundance’s life span. Continuing, Mirvish claimed that “about a third” of the participants in Sundance’s 2011 lineup were Slamdance alumni. “The inmates have taken over the asylum,” Mirvish joked. Someone sitting behind me […]
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SUNDANCE VOLUNTEER RHYS SOUTHAN
As part of our spotlight on volunteerism with Kenneth Cole, here we profile Rhys Southan, who’s working this year to help the Sundance Film Festival’s jury members.
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SUNDANCE 2011: HAPPY HAPPY REFLECTIONS ON A QUEER YEAR
Fresh off the whirlwind opening weekend of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, here are my admittedly skewed impressions of this year’s cinema extravaganza — which seemed queerer than ever despite (or perhaps because of) my being unable to see many of the LGBT films on view. Fear not. I have a well-developed facility for chiming in relevant commentary on films I’ve never seen, and at least one worthy observation on the presentation of the LGBT films at this notoriously queer “straight” festival. So here from the perch of January is a glimpse at the queer year in film ahead. On […]
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Legendary DP Vilmos Zsigmond at Slamdance, 2011
Vilmos Zsigmond, the Oscar-winning cinematographer of such films as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Deer Hunter, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Sugarland Express and The Long Goodbye, dropped by unexpectedly to discusses his work and a special screening of Summer Children at Slamdance. Here is the uncut footage. Shot by Jamie Stuart.
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SUNDANCE VOLUNTEER BRENDA BERLINER
As part of our spotlight on volunteerism with Kenneth Cole, here we profile Brenda Berliner, who is volunteering at the Sundance Film Festival this year in the press office.
